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Source: Variety
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards are certainly a unique situation when it comes to its status in the film awards season landscape. On the one hand, although not as revered as the Academy Awards, this awards ceremony, held by and honoring members of the film industry’s largest acting unions, is easily one of the most talked about, so much so that the ceremony is even broadcast yearly on TNT and other Warner Media owned networks. On the other hand, when it comes to film awards, it isn’t as big as other ceremonies, with there being only six categories dedicated to honoring the art of cinema; even the Golden Globes usually has more categories than that. Then again, the SAG Awards’ popularity probably shouldn’t be all that surprising; as actors are often the most talked about individuals associated with the production of film, it’s only fitting that more people would be interested in seeing them win awards as opposed to any other field or craft. In any case, the SAG Awards are among the most highly anticipated ceremonies of any given awards season, and it was only just recently that the most recent string of SAG Award nominees were made known to the public.
On Wednesday, January 12th, the nominations for the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards were announced on Instagram Live by actors Rosario Dawson and Vanessa Hudgens. It has been revealed that unlike the previous ceremony, which was held virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s event will be held in person once again, taking up space in Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, with TNT and TBS providing television coverage of the proceedings. Starting at 8 pm E.T./5 pm P.T. on Sunday, February 27th, all six film awards (as well as a handful of television awards) will be handed out, and given the lineup of nominees announced, it will certainly be interesting to see who comes out on top, and how the results may provide a bit of foreshadowing of what may come at the Academy Awards.
As the Screen Actors Guild Awards are primarily focused on acting instead of the entirety of the filmmaking process, there is no Best Picture category to be found here, but rather one called Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, which honors the combined talents of a given film’s main cast. This year’s nominated films (and the actors named alongside them) are “Belfast” (Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Ciarán Hinds, Colin Morgan), “CODA” (Eugenio Derbez, Daniel Durant, Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), “Don’t Look Up” (Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ariana Grande, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Lawrence, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Mescudi, Rob Morgan, Himesh Patel, Ron Perlman, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Meryl Streep), “House of Gucci” (Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Salma Hayek, Jack Huston, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Al Pacino)” and “King Richard” (Jon Bernthal, Aunjanue Ellis, Tony Goldwyn, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Will Smith). With this category being the SAG Awards’ Best Picture equivalent, some may be surprised to find that both “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story” are absent from this category, especially since both won Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture and are expected to be frontrunners in the category at the Oscars. However, it should be noted that the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture award has rarely been a trustworthy predictor when it comes to determining what will win the Best Picture Oscar (in recent years, only 2019’s “Parasite” ended up winning both the Oscar and the SAG Award, while Best Pictures like “Nomadland”, “Green Book”, and “The Shape of Water” did not win Outstanding Cast at previous SAG Awards). Because of this, neither film should be affected too negatively by this absence, especially as they do appear in the other categories.
Speaking of the other categories, the individual acting awards have proven to be a bit more reliable when it comes to predicting the eventual Oscar winner, and it’s quite likely that whoever wins a SAG Award this year will go on to do the same at the Oscars. In the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role category, Andrew Garfield of “Tick, Tick… Boom” and Will Smith of “King Richard” are the frontrunners as a result of their respective Golden Globe wins, and for this award, they will compete amongst each other, as well as Javier Bardem of “Being the Ricardos”, Benedict Cumberbatch of “The Power of the Dog”, and Denzel Washington of “The Tragedy of Macbeth”. The award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, meanwhile, will go to one of these five: Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”, Olivia Colman for “The Lost Daughter”, Lady Gaga for “House of Gucci”, Jennifer Hudson for “Respect”, and Nicole Kidman “Being the Ricardos”.
As for the awards for supporting roles, predicting who will win the Oscar from those selected for the SAG Awards might be a bit easier, although the final outcome is still far from certain. For Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role, the nominees are Ben Affleck for “The Tender Bar”, Bradley Cooper for “Licorice Pizza”, Troy Kotsur for “CODA”, Jared Leto for “House of Gucci”, and Kodi Smit-McPhee for “The Power of the Dog”. For Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, the nominees are Caitriona Balfe for “Belfast”, Cate Blanchett for “Nightmare Alley”, Ariana DeBose for “West Side Story”, Kirsten Dunst for “The Power of the Dog”, and Ruth Negga for “Passing”. Having won the Golden Globes in these categories, the odds currently favor Kodi Smit-McPhee and Ariana DeBose at the moment; if they are successful in winning their respective SAG Awards, then their Academy Award wins will be all but guaranteed.
Finally, there is Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture, of which the nominated films are “Black Widow”, “Dune”, “The Matrix: Resurrections”, “No Time to Die”, and “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”. Considering how little recognition stunt work gets, it’s very refreshing to see it get its own category, one of the very few handed out by this organization, and it serves as yet another reminder of what makes the Screen Actors Guild Awards stand out among the rest.
